[analog31]

Discovering and acting against an erroneous consensus is easy to claim in hindsight, to boost your image as some kind of special "thinker." Maybe we need a version of pre-registration for thinkers, like what we now have for some branches of science: You have to document your ideas somewhere, before you test them, in order to get credit for the idea afterwards. And report both the right ideas and the wrong ideas.

[autophagian]

I remember the Long Now Foundation did something like this, where people staked money on long term predictions (with the proceeds from said wagers going to charities): https://longbets.org/

[csdvrx]

> with the proceeds from said wagers going to charities

That alone means it can't work as well as it would, if people not just had skin in the game, but also got to keep the proceeds: a betting market with a selection bias and no profit incentive is a poor imitation of an information market

[ppsreejith]

I’d say profiting off those ideas would probably be a better test (which seems to be what Thiel focuses on i.e profitable secrets). Also, he has many failed investments too so it’s not like his status comes from predicting more wins

[analog31]

Good point, but even that's dicey. It can be hard to objectively link a nebulous broad idea to a specific investment. It makes me think of the entire genre of self serving business hero biographies. Also, the business success can be used to give someone's social ideas credibility, which I'm always skeptical of.

It also creates a bias towards favoring the ideas of people who happen to be motivated by profit. Someone on HN mentioned the HIPPO effect: "Highest Paid Person's Opinion".